Mysterious Universehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org
Blog and Podcast specializing in offbeat newsWed, 19 Dec 2018 08:15:17 +0000en-UShourly1Megalithic ‘Pyramid’ Discovered in Indonesia is More Than 9,000 Years Oldhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/megalithic-pyramid-discovered-in-indonesia-is-more-than-9000-years-old/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/megalithic-pyramid-discovered-in-indonesia-is-more-than-9000-years-old/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 08:15:17 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126538We keep finding things that remind us our view of history has a lot of holes in it. We seem to be finding lost cities, hidden temples, and the remains of civilizations that completely re-frame how we think of them at an ever increasing rate. Recently, the megalithic site Gunung Panang in West Java, Indonesia... Read more »]]>

We keep finding things that remind us our view of history has a lot of holes in it. We seem to be finding lost cities, hidden temples, and the remains of civilizations that completely re-frame how we think of them at an ever increasing rate. Recently, the megalithic site Gunung Panang in West Java, Indonesia was confirmed to be an enormous “pyramid” structure possibly as old as 28,000 years.

According to Live Science, The finding was presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 12. Gunung Padang has been on archaeologists radar for a long time, and embroiled in controversy. A hilltop archaeological site first discovered by archaeologists in the 19th century in West Java, Indonesia, Gunung Padang was long thought to hold more secrets than the assortment of stone columns visible at the top of the site. A imaging and excavation effort that begun in 2014 has now proved that it’s not a hilltop site at all, but in fact the entire hill is an artificial structure, which scientists believe to be a ancient temple. The structure is over 150,000 square meters big, and the the layers of construction date from 3,000 to over 9,000 years ago, with the deepest layer of construction possibly as old as 28,000 years.

According to Andang Bachtiar, an independent geologists who supervised core drilling and soil analysis:

“What is previously seen as just surface building, it’s going down — and it’s a huge structure”

Gunung Padang

Scientists began to suspect something was off about the site when they saw that the standing stones on the hill didn’t match some of the exposed features of the previous archaeological site. They also noticed that the hill stood out from the rest of the topography on Mount Padang. Lead researcher Danny Hilman Natawidjaja explained:

“It’s not like the surrounding topography, which is very much eroded. This looks very young. It looked artificial to us.”

Site at the top of Gunung Padang. Credit : Mohammad Fadli CC BY-SA 3.0

Using ground-penetrating radar, X-ray tomography, core samples, and excavation, researchers began to put together what this huge pyramid looks like. Unlike the symmetrical Mayan pyramids, this is an elongated structure rounded in a half-circle in on the front. Different layers make up the pyramid, representing different periods of construction across the millennia. The first layer consists of basalt terraces, walls and paths. Ten feet below the surface is a second layer of stone columns thought to be 7,500 to 8,300 years old. Below that, a third layer stretches 49 feet below the surface and could be anywhere from 9,000 to 28,000 years old. Researchers also detected multiple underground chambers but those have yet to be excavated or imaged.

The site is still in use as a place of prayer and meditation serving the local people, and researchers think that this may have been its function since it was first built thousands of years ago. Yet, it will be some time before the temple, or whatever it is, will be fully unearthed and researchers know its true purpose or scope.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/megalithic-pyramid-discovered-in-indonesia-is-more-than-9000-years-old/feed/0When An Ancient Monster Rears Its Head(s)https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-an-ancient-monster-rears-its-heads/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-an-ancient-monster-rears-its-heads/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 07:46:51 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126560For centuries, Scottish folklore and legend have both been filled with tales of a wild and deadly beast known as the Kelpie. The terrible beast, which has the ability to transform itself into numerous forms – even that of people – was greatly feared throughout the 1600s and 1700s, when reports of the Kelpie were... Read more »]]>

For centuries, Scottish folklore and legend have both been filled with tales of a wild and deadly beast known as the Kelpie. The terrible beast, which has the ability to transform itself into numerous forms – even that of people – was greatly feared throughout the 1600s and 1700s, when reports of the Kelpie were at their height. As for its curious name, “Kelpie” is an ancient Scottish term meaning “water-horse.” There is a very good reason as to why that particular name was applied to the beast, as will soon become very clear. As its name strongly suggests, the water-horse spent much of its time lurking in the waters of Scottish lochs – specifically in the shallower, marshy areas of such locales. It would coldly and callously wait for an unwary passer-by to appear on the scene and then strike, mercilessly and without any hint of a warning. The beast’s mode of attack was, admittedly, ingenious, even if the end result for the victim was not a good one. In fact, it was almost always downright fatal.

Very much creatures of the night, Kelpies were said to dwell in the waters of literally dozens of Scottish lochs. As creature-seeker Roland Watson demonstrated in his book The Water Horses of Loch Ness, however, the vast majority of reports of such beasts emanate from none other than Loch Ness. We may never know, for sure, the real form of the Kelpie; only the guise that led to the creation of its name. But, what we can say for certain is that the small number of witnesses who encountered the beast, and who lived to tell the tale, described it as a large black or white horse. In most cases, the victim was a late-night traveler, walking along an old, well-known pathway near the water’s edge of the relevant loch. Suddenly, the huge horse would rise out of the water, dripping wet, and make its way to the shore, with its coat shining under the light of the Moon.

Under such strange circumstances, many might be inclined to make a run for it immediately. There is, however, a very strange aspect to many of the Kelpie stories. Namely, that the people who crossed its path felt as if their free will had been taken from them and that they were deliberately prevented from fleeing the scene. Today, we might justifiably suggest that the beast had the power to control the minds of those in its deadly sights. Perhaps, even by a form of supernatural hypnosis. Those fortunate enough to escape the icy clutches of the Kelpie described how they felt driven to climb on the back of the horse and grab its reins. Despite having a sense of dread and a fear of doing so, that’s exactly what so many did – and, in the process, failed to survive and tell their tale. It was at that point that the Kelpie made its move – an incredibly fast move.

With the entranced person now atop the monster, it would suddenly launch itself into the deep and cold waters of the loch, with the poor soul unable to let go of the reins. Death by drowning was all but inevitable, aside from that very lucky, aforementioned body of people who were fortunate enough to have survived and who related their stories – hence why we know of the creature and its terrible modus operandi. As for the reason behind these deadly attacks, it was said that the creatures sought one thing more than any other: the human soul.

Although the Kelpie was very much a monster of centuries long gone, there is a thought-provoking case which suggests a Kelpie may have been on the loose in England in the mid-1970s. In the summer of 1976, an encounter with the much-feared and legendary “Man-Monkey”of Bridge 39 on the Shropshire Union Canal occurred; a supernatural creature first reported in January 1879. It was a strange, spectral, ape-like beast. The 1976 witness was a man named Paul Bell, a keen fisherman and someone who, in July and August 1976, spent several Saturdays out at the canal with his rods, reels, bait, his cans of beer and his favorite beef and onion sandwiches,. Bell told me that, on one particular Saturday afternoon, he was sat near the water’s edge on a small wooden stool that he always carried with him, when he was “literally frozen solid” by the sight of “what at first I thought was a big log floating down the cut, about sixty or seventy feet away.” According to Bell, however, it was no log; it was something else entirely. As it got closer, Bell was both astonished and horrified to see a large “dark brown and black-colored’ eel or snake-like creature – possibly ten feet in length or a little bit more – moving slowly in the water, with its head – that “looked like a black sheep” – flicking rapidly from side to side.

Although he had an old Polaroid camera with him, said Bell, he never even thought to take a photograph. Instead, he merely stared in both awe and shock as the animal cruised leisurely and blissfully past him, before finally vanishing out of sight. Bell stressed that the creature apparently did not see him (“or, if it did, it never attacked me”), and did not appear to exhibit any outright hostile tendencies. What elevated Bell’s story to a far stranger level was the fact that he claimed, in quite matter of fact fashion, that the following Saturday he was fishing in practically the same spot when he had a sudden, out of the blue feeling of being watched. He was not wrong. Peering across the width of the canal, Bell was both horrified and petrified to see a dark, hairy face staring intently at him out of the thick, green bushes. It was the Man-Monkey. The head of the animal was unmistakably human-like, said Bell, who added that “as soon as it saw me looking at it, up it went and ran right into the trees and I lost it.” He further explained: “That was it; a second or two was all at the most. But as it got up and ran I knew it was a big monkey. There’s nothing else it could have been.”

The chances of two strange and unidentified creatures being seen in the same location, and only a week apart, are slim to absolute zero. In fact, we can forget the “slim” angle. The chances are 100 percent zero. My conclusion? That what Paul Bell saw was nothing less than a 1970s incarnation of an ancient Kelpie. Bell was lucky to leave the site alive.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-an-ancient-monster-rears-its-heads/feed/0Ancient Peruvian People Used Chameleon Urine To Paint Potteryhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ancient-peruvian-people-used-chameleon-urine-to-paint-pottery/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ancient-peruvian-people-used-chameleon-urine-to-paint-pottery/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 07:15:57 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126396Scientists have determined that the ancient Peruvian culture used chameleon urine in order to make white paint for their pottery over 2,000 years ago. The urine from chameleons created white pigment for their paint. The type pottery that has never been previously found anywhere else was discovered during the excavation of Paracas cemeteries. The recovered relics... Read more »]]>

The type pottery that has never been previously found anywhere else was discovered during the excavation of Paracas cemeteries. The recovered relics are believed to have been passed on from generation to generation as a family heirloom because the pieces were considered very important to their culture.

The Paracas culture was from the Late Formative Period – from around 900 to 100 BC – on the south coast of Peru and they were known for their beautifully colored ceramics. Their name “Paracas” comes from the Quechua word “para-ako” which translates to “sand falling like rain.” They were apparently quite knowledgeable in irrigation and water management, as well as being known for their impressive textile arts.

Peru

The Paracas Necropolis was discovered in 1927 by a Peruvian archaeologist named Julio Tello. Upon excavation, the mummies were found in a seated position and were buried with weapons and/or baskets. They were also wrapped up in a cone-shaped assortment of cloths as well as embroidered clothing. While the majority of the mummies recovered were males, additional research needs to be done on females and youths to better understand them. Researchers also plan to conduct more examinations in order to find out what consisted in the culture’s diet.

The culture’s magnificent looking ceramics tell an interesting story on how they communicated in ancient times long before computers, internet, and cell phones. Dawn Kriss, who is from the Brooklyn Museum and the first author from a study on the ancient ceramics, wrote, “In the absence of writing, ceramic and textile traditions represented the principal form of cultural communication across long distances and multiple generations.” She went on to explain, “Areas of white pigment on the sherds also contains large amounts of uric acid. In these paints, analysis detected spherical white particles of the same chemical composition as those reported for a white pigment used in African rock art – recognized as originating from snake urine.”

Researchers have also pointed out that the chameleon urine was mixed with an indigo-based blue colorant. After the Paracas people drew their designs onto the pottery, they would then apply the paint. It’s amazing how useful chameleon urine was to that culture and it’s a little baffling as to how they actually came up with the idea to use it for paint.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ancient-peruvian-people-used-chameleon-urine-to-paint-pottery/feed/0Bizarre Cases of Ghosts that Got Justice From Beyond the Gravehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/bizarre-cases-of-ghosts-that-got-justice-from-beyond-the-grave/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/bizarre-cases-of-ghosts-that-got-justice-from-beyond-the-grave/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 06:45:12 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126498It has long been thought that, if ghosts are real, then they might be here for some reason. Perhaps it is because of some extreme emotional trauma that they remain tethered to this plane or maybe they had some unfinished business or un-obtained goal in life that keeps them tied to this world in death.... Read more »]]>

It has long been thought that, if ghosts are real, then they might be here for some reason. Perhaps it is because of some extreme emotional trauma that they remain tethered to this plane or maybe they had some unfinished business or un-obtained goal in life that keeps them tied to this world in death. Most of the time we cannot possibly know what these entities want and so they linger here with their inscrutable errands, trapped amongst the living, perhaps for all eternity. Yet on some occasions the ghosts seem to be successful in achieving what they desire, and here are some odd and curious cases of ghosts who have righted wrongs against them in life and even solved their own murders from beyond the grave.

A very odd case of a ghost supposedly coming forward to solve their own murder is the eerie case of 47-year-old Teresita Basa, a respiratory therapist who was in 1977 working at a place called Edgewater Hospital, in Chicago, Illinois. She was mostly a very normal woman who did her job well and was well-liked by her co-workers, and no one would have possibly predicted the horrific events that were to unfold for her. On the evening of February 21, 1977, firefighters were called to Terasita’s apartment complex on a fire call, and the call led them right up to her own apartment. When the firefighters gained entry into the room they were horrified to find that the tenant, Teresita Basa, was naked, badly burned, and covered with a mattress, but rather than the fire it was mostly surmised that the large kitchen knife sticking out of her chest was what had probably killed her.

The case was immediately considered a murder, and an investigation was launched that quickly ran into dead end after dead end. There were no suspects, no evidence, and no clues except for a cryptic note scrawled in a journal, written by Terasita and merely reading “Get tickets for A.S.,” which may or may not have had anything to do with anything. No one knew, and other than that there was absolutely nothing to go on and the case quickly went ice cold. That is, until a very bizarre and unlikely lead came forward, which would propel the case into the annals of the strange.

Teresita Basa

One day out of the blue, nearly 6 months after the murder, two of the lead investigators on the case, Detective Joe Stachula and Detective Lee Epplen, were approached by a man named Dr. Jose Chua, who it would turn out had a rather odd story to tell indeed. Chua told them that his wife was having bizarre episodes in which she would go into a trance and become possessed by none other than the spirit of Teresita Basa, and that the dead woman had been talking through her at these times. The bemused detectives were understandably quite skeptical of all of this, but their attention was piqued when Chua said that the voice coming from his wife’s mouth claimed to know who the killer was, a man Teresita had known named Allan Showery. Considering that the name matched the initials found in the diary, the detectives decided to hear Chua out, and things only got stranger from there.

The supposed spirit of Teresita Basa had allegedly given a lot of details that no one could have known, in particular the information that Showery had been to Terasita’s apartment on many occasions, in fact on the very evening she was killed in order to fix her television, and had also stolen jewelry from her that same night, which had been given to her mother by her father after a trip to France, after which the thief had had then given as a gift to his girlfriend. The voice had even named names and telephone numbers, and when the detectives checked up on this it turned out to be completely accurate. Now Chua had their full attention, and with a little digging they amazingly found that there was in fact a man named Allan Showery working at the very same hospital where Teresita had worked, and they brought him in for questioning as a possible person of interest.

During the interrogation Showery admitted to having been at Teresita’s apartment on the night of the murder, but he claimed he had only fixed her TV and then gone home, odd considering the “possessed” wife of Chua had eerily said that he had been there for that very purpose. The detectives were getting a very bizarre vibe from all of this, and decided to question Showery’s girlfriend, who told them that he not only did not know the first thing about fixing TVs, but that he had also recently given her some jewelry, which just so happened to exactly match the description that Teresita’s purported spirit had given. When Teresita’s family members were called to the station to look at the jewelry for themselves they confirmed that it was the same as what had been stolen, and by all appearances it seemed that the voice of the very dead Teresita had actually given the first solid lead in months, on her own murder.

When confronted by all of this damning evidence, Showery ended up confessing to the murder to the dumbfounded detectives, saying that he had gone over there on the pretense of fixing the TV in order to kill her so that he could steal the jewelry. He would plead guilty in court as well, earning him convictions for murder, arson, and aggravated assault, although he would only end up serving 5 years of a total sentence of 22 years in prison, all supposedly because of Teresita’s ghost. The case has been met with some skepticism over the years, as it turns out Chua’s wife also had actually worked at the same hospital, and may have picked this information up from mutual friends and co-workers, but no one really knows, and if it is true then the murder of Teresita Basa may just well be the first time a case was solved by the spirit of the murder victim possessing the living to point the finger at her killer.

Speaking of firsts, how about that time when a ghost’s testimony was actually allowed in a court of law? Wait, what? For this one we have to go back to the year 1897, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. In January of that year, a black smith named Erasmus Shue sent the son of a neighbor to visit his wife, Elva Shue, to see if she needed any groceries, and while he was there made a rather gruesome discovery. There at the foot of the stairs was Elva’s lifeless body, set into a strange position with her legs together, one arm flung out while the other lie across her chest, and her head at an awkward angle. A doctor who examined the body came to the conclusion that there was no foul play involved and that she had died from complications of pregnancy, despite the fact that her husband was suspiciously unwilling to allow anyone to examine the body too closely, especially the head and neck, going so far as to have it covered during the funeral for reasons no one knew. Despite this apparent oddness, that was the end of it at the time, at least it was for those who were still alive.

Not long after the case was dropped and the death deemed natural, Elva’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, began to have extremely vivid recurring dreams in which her dead daughter appeared to her and told her that she had been killed by her abusive husband when he had flown into a rage over an unsatisfactory dinner, her neck broken and twisted. Each time the ghost appeared she would punctuate it by creepily spinning her head all the way around and then walking away to vanish as her freakishly twisted around head stared back over her shoulders at the mother. These dreams were described as being incredibly potent and lifelike, unlike anything Heaster had ever experienced, and she began to wonder if her dead daughter really was appearing to her and trying to tell her something. She then approached a policeman named John Preston, who believed it all enough to have the body exhumed where it was found, surprise surprise, that her neck indeed had been forcefully snapped, of which he would say:

On the throat were the marks of fingers indicating that she had been choken [sic]; that the neck was dislocated between the first and second vertebrae. The ligaments were torn and ruptured. The windpipe had been crushed at a point in front of the neck.

This would have been an obvious reason for why Erasmus had gone to such great lengths to make sure no one could properly get a good look at the body, and it was all highly suspicious indeed. Preston dug a bit into Erasmus Shue’s past and found that, although his public face was that of a respectable and well-liked man, he had been married several times before and each of these women claimed that he had been very violent and abusive. Although there was nothing to link him directly to the murder and no witnesses to the crime, this was still enough to get Shue arrested and put on trial for the murder of his wife, and here things would get even weirder still.

During the trial, Heaster took the stand, and although she had been told by Preston not to make any mention of her supernatural experiences, Shue’s defense lawyer relentlessly grilled her on the ghost of her daughter, seeing this as a way to make her look crazy and get her testimony thrown out. The defense’s tactic worked, in the sense that Heaster came out with her stories of being visited by the ghost of her daughter and the information she had gleaned from these visitations, but rather than paint her as a rambling crazy lady the jury actually believed it all, accepted her testimony, and Shue would be found guilty of the murder of Elva Shue, receiving a life sentence that would be cut short by his death by pneumonia. Although it is unclear just how much effect Heaster’s testimony actually had on this decision, it is amazing that it was officially accepted at all, and to this day a plaque in Elva’s honor reads “the only known case in which testimony from [a] ghost helped convict a murderer.”

Similarly, there is another case of a ghostly daughter reaching out to her living mother in order to solve her own murder. It begins in Polstead, Suffolk, England in the year 1827, when a young woman named Maria Marten decided to elope with her lover, William Corder. They agreed to meet one evening at a town landmark called the Red Barn, but Maria sort of vanished after that. Corder frequently mailed the girl’s family from Ipswich, where they had been planning to move to, and told them that she was doing fine, but no one actually heard from her, and it would not be long before the reason why was discovered.

The Red Barn

During the time of these letters everyone assumed that Maria was still alive, and that she had gone through with her plans to elope with Corder and move to Ipswich, but the young woman’s mother began to have very strange dreams that would convince her that something was not quite right. In these dreams she saw her daughter murdered by Corder and her body buried right there at the barn, and she became obsessed with the idea that Maria was reaching out to her from beyond the grave to tell her something. She began telling her husband about these surreal dreams, and he decided to have the barn checked out, more to put her mind at ease than any expectation of actually finding anything. Amazingly, Maria’s body was found right where the dreams had said it would be, and William was arrested and found guilty of her murder and later hanged for it, in a case that would become infamous and known as “The Red Barn Murder.”

In some cases, the vengeful ghost has appeared to multiple witnesses, as is the case with Royal Flying Corps Lieutenant Desmond Arthur, who in 1913 was killed in a tragic crash near the former Angus airfield in Montrose, Scotland. Not long after this, the base became ground zero for all manner of paranormal activity, such as anomalous noises, roving cold spots, the frequent appearance of an apparition that looked like an airman, radios that would play by themselves even without a power source, and even a ghost plane that would fly over only to vanish into thin air. On some occasions the phantom airman was said to approach people at the base and try to speak to them, but no sound would come out, and it was soon realized that this was the ghost of Desmond Arthur, and that he was perhaps lingering around the base for some unknown reason.

Interestingly, just before the haunting began there had been launched an inquiry into the cause of the dead airman’s crash, which had found that the cause had been recklessness, a scandalous ruling that was an embarrassment and tarnished Arthur’s reputation, and which seemed to make the ghostly activity ever more intense. The personnel at the base, and particularly those who had knew him in life, became convinced that the ghost of Arthur was trying to tell them something, and with their pleas a new investigation would be opened into his crash, this time with the Court of Enquiry finding that he was not to blame for the accident and therefore exonerating him. According to the tale, Arthur appeared one more time on Christmas Eve of 1916, this time before his three closest friends at the base who had gotten the new inquiry pushed though, after which he allegedly smiled at each of them and then vanished, this time for good. Although Arthur’s ghost is long gone, apparently appeased now that his name was cleared, there are still many tales of other airmen ghosts at the Montrose base, and indeed it has become rather known as one of the most haunted places in Scotland. Maybe these ghosts too will find their peace someday as well.

Is it possible for wandering ghosts to be chained to this plane of existence because of being kept here by some demon that haunted them in life sure as they haunt the world of the living now? If so, do they possess the ability to right these wrongs and allow themselves to pass on to wherever it is they go? Or is this all just coincidence, overactive imaginations, and lore? We may never know, but it is somewhat fulfilling to at least think that in some cases perhaps these restless spirits were able to exert themselves on the world from beyond the veil of death in order to find the peace and closure they were denied in life.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/bizarre-cases-of-ghosts-that-got-justice-from-beyond-the-grave/feed/0Head Transplant Donor Changes His Mind and Marries Beautiful Woman Insteadhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/head-transplant-volunteer-changes-his-mind-and-marries-beautiful-woman-instead/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/head-transplant-volunteer-changes-his-mind-and-marries-beautiful-woman-instead/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 17:45:16 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126615The off-and-on story of the Russian man who volunteered to be the world’s first head transplant donor just got a happy ending … but it’s probably not the one you or he expected. While the head transplant doctor is in China (what a shock), the former patient is now married to a glamorous and wealthy... Read more »]]>

The off-and-on story of the Russian man who volunteered to be the world’s first head transplant donor just got a happy ending … but it’s probably not the one you or he expected. While the head transplant doctor is in China (what a shock), the former patient is now married to a glamorous and wealthy woman, living in the United States, celebrating the birth of their first child and developing aids so that people with disabilities like him can also fall head-over-heels instead of head-onto-someone else. Is there a movie in this?

“If society doesn’t want it, I won’t do it. But if people don’t want it, in the US or Europe, that doesn’t mean it won’t be done somewhere else.”

In 2015, Dr. Sergio Canavero of Turin, Italy, announced he had the knowledge and he had a volunteer and would conduct a successful head transplant by 2017. (Take a moment to look at the date on the article you’re currently reading.) The volunteer/patient was Valery Spiridonov, a Russian computer programmer permanently confined to a wheelchair by Werdnig-Hoffmann, the most severe type of spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic neuromuscular disease. At the time, Spiridonov explained his reasoning.

“My motivation is about improving my own life conditions and to go to the stage where I will be able to take care of myself, where I will be independent from other people.”

Spiridonov watched as Dr. Canavero experimented successfully with rats and corpses. Then it happened …

“We lived in the same city, and often met on professional matters and soon realised that we felt really good together. She has several degrees… We got married a little over one year ago in Moscow.”

According to Komsomolskaya Pravda and reported in The Sun, Spiridonov met Anastasia Panfilova, a glamorous young woman with a masters degree in chemical technology, a career in computer technology and a thing for guys in wheelchairs.

“Such people are much deeper, feeling, faithful, kind-hearted, and also they are usually very smart… isn’t that the main thing?”

The article announced that Valery and Anastasia are now the proud parents of a six-week-old baby boy (artificial insemination is assumed) who shows no signs of his father’s hereditary disease and are living at a well-appointed beach mansion near the University of Florida where Valery is said to be studying the computer analysis of emotions and working on a voice-activated wheelchair.

Or is he?

Oddly, the pictures (see them here) show plenty of glamour shots of Anastasia and photos of Valery on the beach, but no selfies of the happy couple together or proudly holding the new baby. Also, Spiridonov hints that something (or some things) may have gone wrong with Dr. Canavero’s experiments.

“Everybody would have benefited from information about what went wrong in China and why. I don’t have such information today and it does not help the further research. I do hope Canavero will publish it in detail one day.”

A year ago, Canavero said he had both head and body donors (those would be brain-dead patients) lined up in China. Is the Chinese government worried about the negative publicity this type of operation would undoubtedly generate – similar to the tsunami created by the recent announcement that a doctor there had used gene editing on a human embryo?

Is there something more to this head transplant, head-over-heels, head-spinning, “will someone lose their head over this?” story? We’ll keep our heads in it.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/head-transplant-volunteer-changes-his-mind-and-marries-beautiful-woman-instead/feed/0The Sinister Saga of the Highgate Vampirehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/the-sinister-saga-of-the-highgate-vampire/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/the-sinister-saga-of-the-highgate-vampire/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 17:30:25 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126558There are few stories quite as strange and sinister as that which concerned a terrifying monster called “The Highgate Vampire” – on account of the name of the old, London, England-based cemetery in which the creature lurked. It was in the 1960s that Highgate Cemetery found itself inhabited by a most unwelcome visitor: a seven-to-eight-feet-tall... Read more »]]>

There are few stories quite as strange and sinister as that which concerned a terrifying monster called “The Highgate Vampire” – on account of the name of the old, London, England-based cemetery in which the creature lurked. It was in the 1960s that Highgate Cemetery found itself inhabited by a most unwelcome visitor: a seven-to-eight-feet-tall monster with bright red eyes, an evil-looking and gaunt face, pale skin, and who wore a flowing black cloak. Amid the old graves, a dangerous parasite roamed by night. As for Highgate Cemetery, it was opened in 1839, is located in north London, and is comprised of the East Cemetery and the West Cemetery. It’s a huge and undeniably atmospheric cemetery which extends close to forty acres in size. Catacombs abound, as do moss-covered, crooked gravestones. The dead are everywhere. Also, the cemetery is dominated by huge trees, endless bushes and a massive variety of plants – not to mention a large fox population, owls, and birds of prey. In fact, so revered are Highgate Cemetery’s wooded areas, it has officially been listed as a “Historic Park and Gardens” by the British Government.

It’s not at all surprising that when the sun has set, when the land is shadowy, and when daylight is gone, the cemetery takes on an eerie air. The hoot of an owl, the creaking of the branches of an old tree, and the sight of many and varied old and battered gravestones all combine to send chills up and down the spine of more than a few who know the legend of the resident vampire. And, in decidedly synchronistic fashion, Hammer Film Productions’ 1970s movie Taste the Blood of Dracula was partly filmed in Highgate Cemetery.

Cemeteries are atmosphere-filled places at the best of times. In the 1960s, however, that atmosphere became distinctly chilled – maybe even freezing. Skulls, and even partial human skeletons, were found strewn around Highgate Cemetery, which at the time was very much overgrown – largely because, at the time, the entire place had been left to fall into rack and ruin, something which only amplified the air of mystery and fear that dominated the area. It should be noted, though, that long before the events of the 1960s began, there was already a vampire tradition at Highgate Cemetery. The story has a connection to none other than the man who brought Count Dracula to life: Bram Stoker.

It’s most intriguing to note that in Dracula, Stoker made mention of the old cemetery being the final resting place of one of the deadly count’s followers. It’s possible that Stoker was inspired by an all too real set of eerie circumstances that occurred in the 1800s. In 1855, a woman named Elizabeth Siddal was buried in the cemetery. She didn’t stay there for too long, though: in 1862 her grave was opened up – the reason being, we’re told, that the family wanted to recover a number of poems which Siddal had written and which were interred with her. To the horror of everyone present, and after seven years spent six-feet-under, Siddal looked exactly as she did in life: her corpse had not decayed and her red-hair looked freshly washed and dried. The implication was that Siddal was one of the undead: a vampire.

As for the latter day affairs, when the fiery-eyed creature in black began to be seen in Highgate Cemetery in the 1960s, it didn’t take long before the legend grew and grew: there were stories of people going missing, of graves allegedly desecrated, and of bodies vanished under mysterious circumstances. The creature was also seen roaming around at night, in the old Swains Lane area; its grim and cruel visage sending people into states of unbridled terror. One of the most significant cases took place in late 1969. The story was both strange and creepy: the man in question was taking a walk through the cemetery when he suddenly became disoriented – which was strange, as he knew the area very well. Suddenly, a black-garbed, red-eyed terror loomed into view – hovering several feet off the ground. The man did his utmost to flee the area, but it was all in vain. The creature got closer as the man got progressively weaker – which, with hindsight, led the man to believe the monster was draining him of his life; of his vital energies. The publicity surrounding the alarming incident prompted others to come forward who had also seen the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. One witness who, while walking her dog through the thick and unkempt trees late one night, encountered a shrieking, banshee-like thing that sailed through the air, after which it suddenly dematerialized.

As a then-new decade dawned – the 1970s – Highgate Cemetery’s resident vampire was still causing terror and mayhem. Numerous people contacted the local Hampstead & Highgate Express newspaper to share their encounters with the thing. One of those, whose story was published in the paper – R. Docherty – stated oif the ghost: “Of when and whom he originated I do not know. Many tales are told, however, about a tall man in a hat who walks across Swains Lane and just disappears through a wall in the cemetery. Local superstition also has it that the bells in the old disused chapel toll whenever he walks.” The above quote can also be found in Neil Arnold’s 2010 book, Paranormal London.

Realizing that tales of monsters and spooky places sell newspapers, the staff of the Hampstead & Highgate Express ran an article in 1970 titled “Does a Wampyr Walk in Highgate?” a wampyr being an old German term for a vampire. The interest in, and intrigue surrounding, Highgate’s cemetery’s resident monster was increasing rapidly. The ongoing publicity prompted a young woman to come forward with her own account of an encounter with the creature as she walked past the old cemetery late one night. The pale-faced thing threw her to the ground and vanished into the darkness. Things got even more bizarre when two young men, James White and Simon Wiles, were arrested by the police: the pair was seen prowling around the cemetery and brandishing nothing less than a wooden stake and a crucifix! The police took an extremely dim view of the attempts of the two to slaughter the vampire, but no charges were ever brought. Certainly, it’s doubtful that killing a vampire could even be considered a crime. By 1971, the sightings came to a mysterious-but-welcome halt.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/the-sinister-saga-of-the-highgate-vampire/feed/0Cows May Have Helped To Build Stonehengehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/cows-may-have-helped-to-build-stonehenge/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/cows-may-have-helped-to-build-stonehenge/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 17:15:14 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126394The mystery of how the ancients travelled 160 miles across the British Isles from Wales to Wiltshire with the extremely heavy stones that we now know as Stonehenge may have finally been solved. Cattle were used as “animal engines” to help the Neolithic people carry around large objects. And while it is known that cattle were... Read more »]]>

The mystery of how the ancients travelled 160 miles across the British Isles from Wales to Wiltshire with the extremely heavy stones that we now know as Stonehenge may have finally been solved. Cattle were used as “animal engines” to help the Neolithic people carry around large objects. And while it is known that cattle were used as “engines”, this new information brings the dates back 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Earlier research indicated that the movement of glaciers brought the huge rocks to their current location, but now it seems as though it was actually cows that helped the ancients make the long journey. For approximately 8,000 years, cattle were used to carry heavy loads and this was proven by the discovery of foot bones in ancient cattle.

Archaeologists from the University College London found that the foot bones from Neolithic cattle from the Balkans showed specific wear patterns that could only come from being used as “animal engines”. The cattle were used to haul wood to help create settlements; therefore, it’s very possible that they were also used to carry Stonehenge’s large rocks – which weighed several tons each – to the location where the monument resides to this very day.

Dr. Jane Gaastra, who is the lead author in a study published in Antiquity about this discovery, said, “We have been able to provide the first conclusive evidence that farmers were using cattle for ‘traction’ almost 2,000 years earlier than the previous consensus date. There has only been one other foot sample from the Neolithic period found in Syria but this was inconclusive. The part of the Balkans where we found the bones was heavy forested in the Neolithic period, so chopping trees to create settlements would have required a lot of man power. Cattle would therefore have been a vital asset helping to transport items such as timber for housing.”

The study, which was conducted in the central and western Balkans, indicated that the earliest farmers from Europe used cattle for dairy and meat, but also as a type of power engine. And this happened two thousand years earlier than what they had initially thought.

Dr. Marc Vander Linden, who is the co-author of the study, said, “Until now it has generally been considered that traction only emerged by the 5th and 4th millennium BC, parallel to the introduction of the plough and the wheel, but our study demonstrates that this is not the case. We reveal that when the wheel and the plough became available farmers were already experienced in using cattle for traction, and this could have facilitated the spread of these innovations.”

Researchers studied twelve cattle foot bone samples that came from males and females from eleven Neolithic sites in the central and western Balkans between the years 6,000 and 4,500 BC. They also plan to conduct more studies across Europe in order to determine whether this form of traction happened only in a few Neolithic groups or if it was a popular practice across the continent.

Stonehenge is an incredible and mysterious site, and now that new information has been discovered suggesting that cows helped in the process of constructing the monument, that makes it even more fascinating.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/cows-may-have-helped-to-build-stonehenge/feed/0Mysterious and Unexplained Noises Heard Throughout Chicagohttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-and-unexplained-noises-heard-throughout-chicago/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-and-unexplained-noises-heard-throughout-chicago/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 17:02:35 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126211Seriously: what is causing all of the mysterious booms heard and felt throughout the nation lately? Residents of Chicago and surrounding suburbs are wondering that this week as a series of unexplained and otherwise mysterious noises have been perplexing and worrying residents. On Tuesday, December 11, the northwest Chicago suburb of Elgin was awakened by a... Read more »]]>

Seriously: what is causing all of the mysterious booms heard and felt throughout the nation lately? Residents of Chicago and surrounding suburbs are wondering that this week as a series of unexplained and otherwise mysterious noises have been perplexing and worrying residents. On Tuesday, December 11, the northwest Chicago suburb of Elgin was awakened by a series of mysterious booms in the early morning hours. The noises were so loud that windows and walls shook, according to some homeowners. The city of Elgin is investigating the noise, but has yet to produce an explanation.

A few nights later on December 13, residents of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood began hearing a “mysterious hum in the air.” The sound is described by some residents as a subtle hum, while others say it sounds more high-pitched like an alarm sound or siren. The sound is made even more curious by the fact that only some residents hear it, while others are oblivious to the anomalous noise.

Another mysterious boom was reported just south of Chicago in Paxton, Illinois this week, so loud it could be heard 30 miles away. Paxton Mayor Bill Ingold says he thinks the sound was a sonic boom, while other residents think it might have been a meteorite impact. “Others think it was some kind of creaking noise,” Paxton adds.

Meanwhile, Ford County Board member Tom McQuinn described the sound as “the loudest-hitting thunderbolt I ever heard” despite there being not a single cloud in the sky. A few residents reported hearing several smaller explosion-like sounds before a much larger one. No anomalous fires or craters have been reported as in the case of other mystery booms which turned out to be the work or burgeoning bomb makers. Curiously, some residents reported seeing a green streak in the sky at the same time.

Could any or all of these sounds be connected? Are meteorite impacts getting more frequent, or could these booms be man-made? That is, as more nations test hypersonic aircraft and weapons, might there be activity overhead we don’t know about? Could some unknown phenomenon or event be behind these unexplained booms? Any guess is as good as any at this point.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-and-unexplained-noises-heard-throughout-chicago/feed/0Pennsylvania’s Haunted Charming Forge Mansion is Up for Salehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/pennsylvanias-haunted-charming-forge-mansion-is-up-for-sale/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/pennsylvanias-haunted-charming-forge-mansion-is-up-for-sale/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 07:45:44 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126371It’s time for another edition of “Flip This Haunted House!” Our latest poltergeist palace screaming “Location, location, location of ghosts!” is the Charming Forge Mansion in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, with seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and a load of ghosts, including a grieving lover, Revolutionary War POWs and Native Americans from a graveyard under the foundation. Is... Read more »]]>

It’s time for another edition of “Flip This Haunted House!” Our latest poltergeist palace screaming “Location, location, location of ghosts!” is the Charming Forge Mansion in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, with seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and a load of ghosts, including a grieving lover, Revolutionary War POWs and Native Americans from a graveyard under the foundation. Is it a horror-filled steal at $825,000?

“Arguably the finest “country” house in the early days of our state, the Charming Forge Mansion (1784) features “Philadelphia” quality woodwork in every room. The early wing (1749) is nearly intact from the colonial days when “Baron” Stiegel of Manheim, the original iron master, found the setting “charming”. It remains so with the surroundings along the Tulpehocken Creek protected by a local land trust.”

The real estate listing tells you everything you need to know about the physical structure, 48-acre property and historical significance of the Charming Forge Mansion, which is truly in “museum quality” condition (as seen in the pictures) due to an extensive renovation and upgrade in 1994 and explains why realtors are promoting it as the perfect place for a large family or those interested in the history of this area between Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

“For a century, parties faithful to the ghost tradition have passed the beautiful old manor house with their teeth atremble.”

Or for those interested in ghosts, either for fun or profit. Charles J. Adams III, a Pennsylvania ghosthunter and author, wrote in the Reading Eagle of many of the apparitions associated with the Charming Forge Mansion. Baron Stiegel died there and has been seen in the halls. The most famous tale involves Col. George Ege, an early owner of both the forge and the mansion, who banished a male employee who pined for Ege’s young female ward. The young man returned years later and, while waving to his beloved, fell off of his horse and died, possibly with the reins twisted around his neck so tightly that he was decapitated. That would explain the headless horseman seen riding on the grounds and the presence felt in the girl’s room.

Then there’s the graveyard. It’s believed that a Native American warned Stieger not to build the forge on the Native American graveyard. When Stieger refused, he allegedly placed a “Black Eagle” curse on Charming Forge, and was then killed by a piece of ironmaking equipment. Needless to say, his ghost also haunts the grounds and bones were indeed found there during excavations. If potential buyers hear the sounds of marching, that could be some German POWs captured during the American Revolutionary War and held there, although it’s not known why their spirits may have stuck around.

As expected of someone hoping to get the best price, the current owner claims to have had no ghostly encounters, but some guests have, prompting listing agent Matt Barnhart to make sure buyers who may want ghosts aren’t discouraged.

“Some people have the antenna and can sense that, most people don’t. There’s all kinds of stories.”

And there’s a buyer for every house. If you’re interested, check out the listing and the photographs. That’s it for this edition of “Flip Your Haunted House.” Now stay tuned for “American Haunted House Pickers.”

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/pennsylvanias-haunted-charming-forge-mansion-is-up-for-sale/feed/0Circus Freaks, Murder, and the Evil Lobster Boyhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/circus-freaks-murder-and-the-evil-lobster-boy/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/circus-freaks-murder-and-the-evil-lobster-boy/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 07:15:55 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126459In the world of true crime there are often cases that leave us scratching our heads and just simply open-mouthed at the absurdity and weirdness of it all. These cases are not always particularly supernatural in nature or even unsolved, but nevertheless hold a veneer of the truly odd and ridiculous. Surely one of the... Read more »]]>

In the world of true crime there are often cases that leave us scratching our heads and just simply open-mouthed at the absurdity and weirdness of it all. These cases are not always particularly supernatural in nature or even unsolved, but nevertheless hold a veneer of the truly odd and ridiculous. Surely one of the greatest of these must be the case of an evil circus freak known as the Lobster Boy, who went from a famed sideshow performer to a dark and unrepentant murderer.

In June of 1937, Grady Franklin Stiles Jr. came into this world already a bit of a monster in the eyes of many. Like his father before him he was born with a birth defect called ectrodactyly, which is basically a congenital deformity that causes a fusing of the toes and fingers that twists them into claw-like appendages. Indeed, the whole Stiles family had long been cursed with this genetic affliction, and Grady’s own father had made a living off his deformity by touring with traveling carnival sideshows where people would gawk at his claw-like hands and feet. It was his father that would bring him into the act at the tender age of just seven years old, and Grady would perform under the name “Lobster Boy,” part of the famous “Lobster Family,” touring off and on from their permanent home in Gibsonton, Florida, a notorious town where many circus freaks and geeks wintered.

The Stiles family

Grady had the deformity pretty bad, with his feet and hands both fused into two-pronged claws that prevented him from walking, although he was known for his ability to crawl along on his hands and for his impressive upper body strength. He and his family made a rather good living off of people’s morbid fascination with their contorted physical features, and Grady grew up rather well-off because of it. He would later marry a normal woman who worked at the circus by the name of Maria Teresa, and they would have four children, with two of them inheriting the same gruesome affliction as Grady and his family, and they too got in on the lucrative freak show circuit. It all seemed like things were doing well for Grady Stiles Jr., and that he had made a successful life for himself despite his challenges, an inspiration for others to overcome their physical limitations and make something of themselves, but there was darkness lurking in the background, and he was about to begin his grim journey into true monsterhood.

By all accounts Grady had already always been a bit of a hot head, prone to losing his temper and throwing tantrums at a moment’s notice, to the point where many of the other sideshow performers outright avoided him, but things escalated quickly when he became fond of hitting the bottle. He became a slave to the demon of alcoholism, and he was not a happy drunk, with his family taking most of the brunt of his alcohol-fueled outbursts. Grady would shout at, abuse, and both mentally and physically torture his wife and kids, and he was supposedly incredibly strong, his clawed hands like vices, which made him all the more terrifying to those around him. By this time he had branched out to start his own freakshow, and by all accounts he was a tyrannical and abusive boss who instilled great fear and loathing amongst his peers. Grady’s son, Grady Stiles III, would in later years say of this state of affairs:

I’m not a fan of my dad as a person. My father was racist [and] abusive. When I cried, [he was like] ‘I’ll give you a reason a to cry. I think alcohol brought out the worst in him.

This would go on for years, with the domestic violence and rampaging tantrums steadily escalating until one day things took a rather macabre turn. Grady’s daughter Donna had apparently fallen in love and gotten engaged to a Jack Layne. This was one of the physically “normal” kids, and the apple of her daddy’s eye, well at least when he wasn’t beating her, and he strongly objected to the marriage. He objected so much so in fact, that he gave the phrase “shotgun wedding” a very literal twist when he grabbed his shotgun and proceeded to blow away the would-be son-in-law on the day before their planned wedding in 1979. Considering the perpetrator’s reputation as a side show freak and the overall surreal quality to the whole thing, the murder became a media sensation at the time, all fueled by Grady’s complete lack of remorse and even at times braggadocio concerning what he’d done.

Grady Stiles Jr.

With Grady shamelessly admitting to the murder and even gloating about it, one would think that it would be an open and shut case, that they would lock the Lobster Boy up and throw away the key, but things would take an unusual turn during the trial. Grady’s deformity, combined with his chronic liver disease due to his excessive drinking and bad case of emphysema from his constant chain smoking, managed to get him a sympathetic verdict, and he was only sentenced to 15 years of probation and house arrest. As such, he was free to return home and continue his reign of terror, in the meantime getting divorced, remarrying to have two more kids, and then marrying his first wife yet again. Through it all the alcoholism and violence never stopped, indeed becoming even worse and more relentless, with the Lobster Boy often drunkenly proclaiming that he would kill them all, until Grady’s own wife and son decided that something needed to be done about it once and for all.

The wife went about concocting a plan along with her son Harry, a freak himself called “The Human Blockhead,” known for using his head to bash nails into boards, to have her husband killed, and in the process hired a 17-year-old circus performer and hitman with gang connections by the name of Chris Wyant to carry it out. On the evening of November 29, 1992, Grady was in his living room planted in front of the TV like any other night, but this time he wasn’t alone. Wyant crept up behind him, raised a .32 Colt Automatic to the back of the Lobster Boy’s head, and blew his brains out at point blank range. There was no love lost with Grady’s death, with no one even wanting to be his pallbearer at his funeral, and his wife, son, and the hitman were promptly arrested and convicted of murder, with Wyant sentenced to 27 years in prison and Teresa given 12 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder. Glen got the worst of it, labelled as the mastermind and given a life sentence. For her part, Teresa would defend her actions by saying, “My husband was going to kill my family. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry this happened, but my family is safe now.”

It is all a totally outlandish case, inhabited by colorful characters from another era where deformities were something people paid good money to go and see. It is also a rather tragic tale of a man who had a life of being gawked at and treated like something less than human, the Lobster Boy, never respected, and perhaps this contributed to his fall from grace and his descent into murder and madness. Whatever the case may be, with its cast of characters and pincer-handed hellion of a villain, it is certainly one of the most bizarre and outlandish murder cases there is.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/circus-freaks-murder-and-the-evil-lobster-boy/feed/0Mysterious Skeletons Found Without Feet in Peruhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-skeletons-found-without-feet-in-peru/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-skeletons-found-without-feet-in-peru/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 06:45:55 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=125889At least 15 skeletons found among a burial area in Pomalca, Peru’s El Chorro Archaeological complex were discovered with their feet missing. To make things more interesting – or disturbing – the skeletons specifically missing feet were those of children and adolescents. Initial reports believed this may have been due to amputations during life, but... Read more »]]>

At least 15 skeletons found among a burial area in Pomalca, Peru’s El Chorro Archaeological complex were discovered with their feet missing. To make things more interesting – or disturbing – the skeletons specifically missing feet were those of children and adolescents. Initial reports believed this may have been due to amputations during life, but subsequent investigations, which discovered one of the bodies was missing a femur, found that an entire fibula was missing from the bones. This meant the foot stealing occurred after death.

But who would steal the skeletal feet from the bodies of children, and for what purpose? The bones were believed to have come fro the Moche and Lambayeque cultures, who lived on the northern coast of Peru before Western invasion of the continent. They were known for pottery, jewelry and even early metalworking skills from 50-800 A.D. One of the practices believed to be practiced by these cultures is the making of jewelry from the bones of lost loved ones – specifically children who perished before their times.

The practice of utilizing the bones of lost loved ones to make icons of their memories – such as lockets – was common before Spanish conquistadors landed. Some of the graves uncovered in El Chorro even featured looms next to them designed to make such items from bones. As many as 60 urns were also discovered near the site with the remains of llamas and guinea pigs.

Human sacrifice and pyramid building were also a part of the Moche culture. The Lambayeque culture, to whom at least nine of the graves belonged, followed the Moche, lasting until just before 1400.

Evidence of rituals were also discovered near the grave sites, indicating those who buried the dead engaged in rites, which may have included food, drinks and music. Outside of the evidence of feasts involving llamas and guinea pigs, whistles and pots showing the wear of preparing the food were discovered near the graves.

While making jewelry from the remains of lost loved ones may seem strange from today’s perspective, it was common in those times and is making a bit of a comeback today. In a recent story published in Vice, a Phoenix-based company called “Sunspot Designs” operates a line of gothic-style jewelry made of human remains called “Churchyard.” Jewelry designs included in that line utilize human bones in much the same fashion as the ones possibly designed by the grieving loved ones who buried their children more than a thousand years ago on the north side of Peru.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/mysterious-skeletons-found-without-feet-in-peru/feed/018.25 – MU Plus+ Podcasthttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/18-25-mu-plus-podcast/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/18-25-mu-plus-podcast/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2018 05:56:06 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126490On this episode of Mysterious Universe Plus+ we cover the thrilling conclusion to the secret of clandestine technologies being kept from the world. Have they been hidden from humanity to protect us from the creation of a weapon that has the ability to boil the oceans and wipe us from existence? This episode is EXCLUSIVE... Read more »]]>

On this episode of Mysterious Universe Plus+ we cover the thrilling conclusion to the secret of clandestine technologies being kept from the world. Have they been hidden from humanity to protect us from the creation of a weapon that has the ability to boil the oceans and wipe us from existence?

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/18-25-mu-plus-podcast/feed/0Ignore the Curse! 4400-Year-Old Egyptian Tomb Openedhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ignore-the-curse-4400-year-old-egyptian-tomb-opened/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ignore-the-curse-4400-year-old-egyptian-tomb-opened/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 16:50:12 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126407Does anyone worry about Egyptian curses guarding ancient tombs anymore? Apparently not since the country’s tourism ministry figured out how much money can be made by holding big ‘tomb opening‘ media extravaganzas as soon as they’re found. The curses don’t even seem to be scaring away tourists who are actually climbing up the Great Pyramid... Read more »]]>

Does anyone worry about Egyptian curses guarding ancient tombs anymore? Apparently not since the country’s tourism ministry figured out how much money can be made by holding big ‘tomb opening‘ media extravaganzas as soon as they’re found. The curses don’t even seem to be scaring away tourists who are actually climbing up the Great Pyramid to take nude selfies — unless you count getting arrested as a curse). Whatever the case, any and all curses were ignored over the weekend as a 4,000-year-old “exceptionally well-preserved” tomb belonging to a royal purification priest under the reign of King Nefer Ir-Ka-Re was opened and exposed to the harsh lights of the world media.

Shouldn’t there be a “No climbing or nude selfies” sign?

“It is the most beautiful tomb discovered this year.”

If anyone should know, it’s Antiquities Minister Khaled Anany, who announced the opening of yet another tomb at the Sacred Animal Necropolis in Saqqara to Egypt Today and other media sources. “Royal purification,” a description found in the tomb’s hieroglyphics, means high priest “Wahtye” was a supervisor for the king whose duties included inspecting the holy boat, which is most likely the funerary vessel used for taking the king to the afterlife. Wahtye had no boat in his own tomb, but the fact that it has apparently never been looted or even opened since its sealing meant that the writings and paintings on the walls were in great shape (see the beautiful photos here) and told the stories of his life, his wife ’Weret Ptah’, his mother ‘Merit Meen’ and the rest of his family participating in activities such as making wine and pottery, religious ceremonies, sailing and hunting. Royal purification priest was obviously a pretty good gig during the reign of King Nefer-Ir-Ka-Re, who ruled during the fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, a period from the early 25th century BCE until the mid 24th century BCE.

Sailing on the Nile

“The color is almost intact even though the tomb is almost 4,400 years old.”

Secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri really didn’t need to put any more spin on the announcement. The tomb is a rectangular shape measuring 10 meters (33 feet) long, 3 meters (10 feet) wide and 3 meters high, with a basement with a basement, five burial shafts and two false doors. The colors are brilliant for being 4,000 years old and the statues carved into wall niches are in great shape. It’s no wonder the Antiquities Ministry opened the tomb just days after its discovery and is already preparing to open another one nearby that was just found.

Are the curses gone? Did they ever exist to begin with? Perhaps the only people being cursed by these ancient Egyptian tombs are the ones who were planning new mummy horror movies.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ignore-the-curse-4400-year-old-egyptian-tomb-opened/feed/0When We Unknowingly Create Dangerous Entitieshttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-we-unknowingly-create-dangerous-entities/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-we-unknowingly-create-dangerous-entities/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 16:32:16 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126319Related, to a degree, to the phenomenon of the thought-form or Tulpa (see my recent article on comic-book writer Alan Moore and the matter of his creation, Constantine) is that of the dangerous poltergeist. As for the German word from which it originates, in English it is “noisy spirit.” The poltergeist is a violent entity... Read more »]]>

Related, to a degree, to the phenomenon of the thought-form or Tulpa (see my recent article on comic-book writer Alan Moore and the matter of his creation, Constantine) is that of the dangerous poltergeist. As for the German word from which it originates, in English it is “noisy spirit.” The poltergeist is a violent entity which engages in hostile, terrifying activity. It torments those in the home where the activity is taking place, and has the ability to place the victims of the attacks in downright danger. The poltergeist is somewhat different to the average disembodied spirit or Tulpa, however. Faced with the likes of seeing furniture moving across one’s living-room, windows shattering, beds raising off the floor, books flying off their shelves, and electrical items blowing out, it is perfectly natural to ascribe all of this chilling activity to an evil, supernatural entity. Things are not quite as straightforward as that, however. As you will now see. The truth may very well be much weirder.

It is a fact that the vast majority of all poltergeist activity revolves around one particular person in the targeted family. Typically, it’s a young girl – either prepubescent, or going through puberty. In an article titled “Poltergeists,” Crystalinks state: “Due to hormonal and emotional changes in the teenager’s body, negative energy may be thrust outwardly sometimes moving or destroying objects telekinetically.” In other words, what we have here is a case of young girls unknowingly – as in completely unknowingly – causing the very phenomena that are assumed to have external components that dictate and direct the activity – such as a ghost, a demon, or, perhaps, one of the mysterious and malevolent Shadow People. On rare occasions, the girl may spontaneously manifest the image of a ghostly figure – albeit not from some hellish, unearthly realm, it must be stressed, but from the depths of her dark imagination and subconscious. And, the greater the level of that “negative energy” to which Crystalinks refers, the greater the power and substance that is given to that creation of the imagination.

So, what we have here is a chaotic, and usually spiraling, situation that can go wildly out of control. It begins in the throes of the human mind, but can then rapidly become externalized in just about the worst ways conceivable, which is not too different to what we see when people create Tulpas, whether deliberately or via the subconscious. As for the causal factor in all of this – a young girl, for the most part – she very often finds herself feeling becoming weaker and weaker as the incidents and experiences grow in number and scope. That is hardly surprising, though: after all, the girl is unknowingly discharging precious, human energy into her immediate environment – energy which she cannot do without. The result: sometimes, but not always, the central person in the saga gets sick, as the freakish phenomenon itself only goes from strength to strength.

In essence, the girl is destroying her very own health by expelling the essential energies that her body requires – energies which then wreak havoc in the home. Fortunately, in many such cases on record, poltergeist activity will come to a sudden halt – perhaps after a period of days, weeks or, in some cases, even months. Why might that be? Maybe, because the hormonal imbalances that we all go through in puberty have leveled out, and the turmoil and emotional highs and lows have begun to lessen. As they lessen, so does the amount of energy directed to keeping the poltergeist “alive” – and to the point where, finally, the energy has dissipated and the poltergeist is no more.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/when-we-unknowingly-create-dangerous-entities/feed/0Strange Tales of American Presidents and the Paranormalhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/strange-tales-of-american-presidents-and-the-paranormal/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/strange-tales-of-american-presidents-and-the-paranormal/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 16:16:55 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126365It seems that brushes with the paranormal and the world of the weird can happen to anyone at anytime. People of all ages and from all walks of life have had experiences with things that lie beyond their understanding, leaving them baffled and in wonder of what lies beyond the veil of what we think... Read more »]]>

It seems that brushes with the paranormal and the world of the weird can happen to anyone at anytime. People of all ages and from all walks of life have had experiences with things that lie beyond their understanding, leaving them baffled and in wonder of what lies beyond the veil of what we think we know. Certainly some odd accounts have come even from our leaders and people in great power, and U.S. presidents over the ages have not been immune to strange encounters and tales of the paranormal. Here are a few of the more bizarre stories of American presidents and their experiences with that strange world beyond our comprehension.

One very well-known strange story concerning an American president lies within the world of cryptozoology, and revolves around none other than the 26th president and consummate outdoorsman and naturalist Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Known for forging himself into a tough as nails, swaggering man’s man from his earlier years as a rather sickly child, Roosevelt was also quite famous for his array of daring pastimes, such as boxing, hiking, hunting, and others, and also was in the military leading his own cavalry unit that was instrumental from driving the Spanish from Cuba, and this all helped to mold his image as the ultimate tough guy. Considering his adventurous lifestyle and outdoor excursions, it is perhaps no surprise that the popular Roosevelt has over the years accumulated about himself a rather larger than life image, with numerous rumors and legends associated with him, and yes some have to do with none other than the North American mysterious creature called Bigfoot.

Theodore Roosevelt

Many of the wilder claims over the years have been that Roosevelt indeed saw Bigfoot or even shot one, but these are mostly relegated to urban legends that have no evidence and are never mentioned in Roosevelt’s own writings. However, there is a rather interesting and very bizarre encounter with Bigfoot that was once related to Roosevelt and which appears within his 1893 book The Wilderness Hunter. The book is for the most part just a collection of stories, anecdotes, and various accounts of hunters and outdoorsmen, and is for the most part not connected in any way to anything particularly paranormal or outlandish, yet sitting there amongst the other tales is one that stands out as being quite odd indeed.

Roosevelt claimed that the story had been told to him by a mysterious individual named “Bauman,” with nothing else at all to illuminate his identity other than that he was a hunter and of German ancestry. According to the book, the man had an encounter at the Beaverhead Mountains, on the border of Montana and Idaho, with what is referred to as a “goblin,” the best term Roosevelt could come up with when the word “Bigfoot” had not been invented yet. The account is as curious as it is harrowing, and Roosevelt would write of the frightening tale:

I once listened to a goblin story which rather impressed me. It was told by a grizzled, weather-beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman, who was born and had passed all his life on the frontier. He must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points of the tale; but he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the Indian medicine men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the spectres, and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk; and it may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.

When the event occurred Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of Salmon from the head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck he and his partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many Beaver. The pass had an evil reputation, because the year before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was there slain, seemingly by a wild beast, the half-eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before.

The report explains how Bauman and his companion kept finding huge footprints of some beast in the forest, and that they could at times hear “a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister sound.” They soon came under the impression that something was following them through the trees, perhaps even stalking them, and on two occasions their camp was supposedly ransacked by the unseen beast. They at first took it to be a bear, but soon realized that the tracks were from something bipedal and very un-bearlike, and that the hulking form was larger than a mere bear. Then the account reaches a crescendo when Bauman claims that they were actually attacked by the creature, which killed his friend by breaking his neck and leaving “four great fang marks in the throat.”

While it is a spectacular report indeed, and a rare violent Bigfoot encounter, Roosevelt pretty much just leaves it at that. There is no further mention of this account anywhere else, no way to identify who Bauman is, and there is not even really any deep reflection on whether there is any truth to it all or not. Roosevelt simply throws out his “goblin story” and moves on, without giving us any real hint as to what he personally thinks of it all or even whether he was even being serious or not. We are left with a second hand account with very little verifiable information and so it is just an anomaly in an otherwise straight and grounded book. Indeed, Roosevelt was not one to really go into fantastical stories of the paranormal, and once wrote:

Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very superstitious. They lead lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost stories while living on the frontier, and these few were of a perfectly commonplace and conventional type.

What the creature was, the identity of Bauman, and whether Roosevelt ever believed any of it or not are probably bound to remain mysteries, but it is a curious case nevertheless. Other brushes with the presidency and the paranormal are more up close and personal. The famed 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, had more than his share of encounters with the world beyond our senses during his presidency from 1861 to 1865. For one, he is reported to have had potent nightmares that predicted his own death. One night it is reported that Lincoln dreamed that he had woken to the sound of a crying, lamenting crowd, who told him in the dream that they were sad because their president had just passed away. On another occasion, the night before his assassination in fact, he is said to have related a dream in which he was upon a ship “sailing toward a dark and indefinite shore.” Were these dreams prophetic in nature?

Abraham Lincoln

Even more bizarre still was the time that Lincoln encountered something quite paranormal on his own election day. On the very day of his election in 1860, just after he had been told that he was now president of the United States, Lincoln had apparently been sitting on a sofa at home when he looked into a full length mirror and saw himself standing there within it, only oddly with two faces, one paler than the other, cast over with an almost deathly pallor. Startled and a bit unsettled, Lincoln had then stood up to approach the mirror and the apparition had promptly vanished. The rather disconcerted president sat back down on the sofa only for his own, creepy two-faced visage to materialize within the mirror once again.

The incident would disturb Lincoln, who went on to tell his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, about it. A few days later, the mysterious doppelgänger in the mirror would appear again, and Lincoln’s wife became increasingly convinced that it was a portent of bad things to come, and that it all meant he would be elected to a second term but would not live through it. The spooky incident was written of in a book by Noah Brooks, who claimed to have heard it first-hand from Lincoln himself, and who wrote about it in his Washington in Lincoln’s Time (1895). President Abraham Lincoln would indeed die one month into his second term, just as his wife had predicted and feared.

This sounds very much like he saw his own doppelgänger, which according to lore is never a good thing. The word doppelgänger originally derives from the German phrase meaning “double goer,” and rather than denoting one who simply bears a striking resemblance to another, the origin of the word is steeped in the world of the strange, sinister, and supernatural. The myths and legends orbiting the doppelgänger phenomenon are varied. In some traditions they were considered to be shadow selves; ghostly twins that follow their owners around and which all of us possess, although they rarely make themselves known. These shadow beings were often said to be nefarious harbingers or portents of bad luck, hardship, illness, disaster, and death, and it was never thought to be a good thing if one were to see their own doppelgänger. In other traditions, the doppelgänger is a supernatural entity such as a spirit or demon, which takes the form of a person for inscrutable purposes, and other tales describe them as a physical manifestation of a person’s spirit, a sort of extension of them given form in the physical world. So did Lincoln see his, and did it work its grim magic upon him? Who knows? Interestingly, Lincoln’s ghost has become one of the more commonly seen apparitions in the supposedly very haunted White House.

Speaking of the haunted White House, we also have the 33rd president of the United Sates, Harry Truman, who was convinced that the place was intensely haunted. The White House has long had a reputation for exhibiting various paranormal phenomena, including the aforementioned Lincoln’s ghost, but Truman actually was the only president to directly confront these rumors with his own report. He would at one time in 1946 write a letter to his wife explaining one of these encounters, saying:

I slept well but hot, and some mosquitoes bit my hands and face. Night before last I went to bed at nine o’clock after shutting all my doors. At four o’clock I was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one there. Went out and looked up and down the hall, looked into your room and Margie’s. Still no one. Went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door I’d left open. Jumped and looked and no one there! The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’. Secret service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour.

Although there are numerous reports of ghostly phenomena at the White House this is a rare first hand account from the president himself. Finally we come to a rather odd and anomalous report linked to the 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, who actually inherited the presidency from Lincoln after his tragic, untimely death. In 1933 there was a particularly odd account in a book by the legendary Charles Fort called Wild Talents, that held with some rather mysterious details. According to the book, Johnson once pardoned a man in 1867 who had been charged with killing two sailors and drinking their blood, played up as being an actual real vampire, and who apparently said as much himself.

It sounds rather wild, and it turns out it came from a 1892 newspaper article in the the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which identified the perpetrator as being a Portuguese sailor named James Brown, who was described as being “a vampire and living on human blood.” However, although this report has been embraced by the paranormal world for years, there was some skepticism cast upon it by a researcher named Robert Damon Schneck, who devoted a good amount of time trying to uncover the truth behind the tale, and who wrote a whole book on it and similar cases called The President’s Vampire. According to Schneck, in the original report Brown had indeed been real, and had really killed one sailor and had his sentence commuted to life in prison from the death penalty by Johnson, but that the original case had included no talk of vampires, double murders, or drinking blood, with these elements added in with the newspaper article. It is his suspicion that the Daily Eagle had gotten a bit creative with the tale and embellished it quite a bit. Nevertheless, the story of president Johnson pardoning an actual vampire has stuck in the lore and will probably stay there for some time to come.

Here we have looked at some of the kookier and spookier tales from American presidents that remain rather off the radar and off the record of their official dealings. It is uncertain of whether any of this is true or not, but it is an intriguing peek into a lesser known realm of the presidency, and an eye opening reminder that all is not always as it seems on the surface and that anyone can have these brushes with the unknown. No matter how odd you may think any president is, just remember that there is always the possibility that that is just the surface, and that stranger things still lie beneath it all.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/strange-tales-of-american-presidents-and-the-paranormal/feed/0Radar Scans Look for Strange Things Under Dracula’s Haunted Castlehttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/radar-scans-look-for-strange-things-under-draculas-haunted-castle/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/radar-scans-look-for-strange-things-under-draculas-haunted-castle/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 11:05:08 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126384It’s been standing since the 14th century but looks nothing like its original layout. It on the lists of largest castles in Europe, Seven Wonders of Romania and most haunted places in Romania. It’s the Transylvanian castle where Vlad the Impaler allegedly went mad while imprisoned in its dungeon and forced to eat rats. It’s... Read more »]]>

It’s been standing since the 14th century but looks nothing like its original layout. It on the lists of largest castles in Europe, Seven Wonders of Romania and most haunted places in Romania. It’s the Transylvanian castle where Vlad the Impaler allegedly went mad while imprisoned in its dungeon and forced to eat rats. It’s Romania’s Corvin Castle and it’s back in the news as modern architects using ground-penetrating radar are trying to peer back to its initial design before all of the many reconstructions and additions took place, and restore some of them to their original appearance. What mysterious new discoveries have they made about Castelul Corvinilor – did Vlad’s ghost give them a personal tour?

“In order to do a good job with our reconstruction, we need to know where all these pieces are.”

This is no mere renovation to attract more tourists. Isabel Morris, a doctoral candidate with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University and a leading researcher in the use of non-destructive methods such as ground penetrating radar to aid architectural conservation efforts, presented the results of her Corvin Castle study this past week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in Washington DC. (Washington DC? Why is Washington involved with Vlad the Impaler? Asking for a friend/conspiracist.)

19th century drawing of the castle

In LiveScience, Morris describes the purpose of the project as a means to help scientists and historians exploring the castle, which underwent massive expansions in the 17th and 19th centuries, who are trying to work with conflicting and inaccurate maps and often no records at all. If nothing else, the new radar data will improve safety conditions at the castle, pointing out which areas are standing on solid bedrock versus ancient and unsturdy supports. Who wants to fall into Vlad’s dungeon cell? Or open a wall that may contain trapped ghosts?

Yes, the research has uncovered a previously unknown torture chamber but no evidence – physical or paranormal – of whether Vlad spent time there in it during an alleged 7-year imprisonment at the castle in the 1400s. There’s no real proof this is where a rat diet drove him to become the Impaler, but many believe they’ve felt the presence of his ghost. Or perhaps it’s the ghost of Bram Stoker trying to confuse those looking for evidence that this castle, not Bran Castle, was the inspiration for the one in his Dracula book.

Vlad

Perhaps the ground-penetrating radar can resolve the legend of the three Turkish prisoners who allegedly dug through 30 meters of solid stone to find water in return for their freedom. A well is on the property today, along with the purported ghosts of the prisoners who were murdered instead of freed. Then there’s the monk said to have been sealed alive in a wall of the castle’s Capistrano Tower for spying on noblemen – the story has never been verified but his ghost is often reported in the tower. Can someone lift the radar gun and point it at the wall?

In fact, maybe the radar should be lifted on a crane so it can check out the entire place. There have been reports of ghosts appearing in many photographs taken at the castle and there’s a famous story of guards staying at the castle overnight who were found the next morning beaten and bloody and blaming it on torture-loving ghosts. Vlad? Is that you?

In any case, why not use some sophisticated scientific equipment to check out some interesting paranormal legends? Would YOU set foot in Dracula’s castle without a good ghost map?

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/radar-scans-look-for-strange-things-under-draculas-haunted-castle/feed/0UFOs Around the World: Russiahttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ufos-around-the-world-russia/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ufos-around-the-world-russia/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 10:50:39 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=125553Over the next several weeks, I’ll be conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a picture of global UFOlogy today. Paul Stonehill was born in Kiev, USSR, in 1959 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1972. In his youth, Paul helped smuggle people out from behind... Read more »]]>

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a picture of global UFOlogy today.

Paul Stonehill was born in Kiev, USSR, in 1959 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1972. In his youth, Paul helped smuggle people out from behind the iron curtain, aided dissidents, and smuggled banned literature into the USSR. He graduated from California State University with a BA in Political Science and wrote a thesis on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Paul has worked as journalist covering warfare as well as freelancing on stories about anomalous phenomena. He created the Russian Ufology Research Center in 1991.

Paul Stonehill.

After the fall of Communism, his articles were published throughout Russia and the Ukraine. Since 1989, Paul has consulted for American television and motion picture production companies, as well as corporate entities.

RG: Who have been the defining figures in Russian UFOlogy over the past 70 years (for better or for worse), and why?

PS: Alexander Kazantsev, the former military engineer, administrator, and later sci-fi writer in the USSR. He was never persecuted or purged, even though he participated in the New York Expo in 1939. He came up with the hypothesis that the Tunguska Event was actually an E.T. spaceship, and he helped the early efforts of Soviet civilian UFOlogists propel their ideas to the Soviet public in a totalitarian state.

Alexander Kazantsev.

Also, Felix Zigel, Soviet scientist and active UFO researcher and a target of attention of the KGB and CIA. Zigel and his colleagues studied UFOs in the 1960s-1980s in the face of great adversity—in spite of informants, lack of funds and belittlement from the official media and the Communist Party ideologues; in spite of the books of American debunkers eagerly published in the USSR; in spite of inability to respond to arrogant and sly opponents who published articles against their efforts in the Soviet newspapers; in spite of the inability to spread their ideas through public lectures when available facilities would be shut and access denied.

Also worthy of mention are: Mikhail Gershtein, the tireless author and researcher in Russia—a scientist, journalist, and collector of UFO lore of his country; Vadim Chernobrov of the KOSMOPOISK—scientist, author, philosopher who passed away in 2017; and Vladimir Ajaja, who has contributed greatly to his nation’s UFO-and USO-research, despite some problems with the ideologues. Also, Kolchin, Villinbakhov, Petukhov, Smirnov, Dvuzhilni, Arkhipov, Popovich, as well as a number of others, most of whom have passed away but who helped shape Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian Ufology.

RG: What do you consider to be the most compelling Russian UFO incident on record, and why?

PS: There are two: the 1908 Tunguska Event, and 1986 Dalnegorsk Crash. The 1908 event was possibly an intercept of an alien/ET spaceship by an Earth-based projectile or missile. Despite the research that has been going on for 110 years—some of it quite secretive and mysterious—we know little about the actual event. But its impact at the time was quite tremendous.

Aftermath of the Tunguska event. Photograph from Kulik’s 1929 expedition taken near the Hushmo River.

The 1986 event was the destruction of a UFO—most likely self-destruction—in a remote (and off-limits to foreigners) mining town in the Soviet Far East. The debris left behind is considered by a number of scientists to be something that our current technology is unable to manufacture. Others disagree and consider the object to have been a foreign spy apparatus, but the Soviet government remained uncharacteristically quiet about the “intruder.” The event took place one day after the Challenger Disaster. What is the connection? Why were the Chinese ufologists (and some Korean) so very interested in the debris? Why did a whole school or group of UFOs visit the area in 1987, one year after the crash? Why are there more interesting UFO sightings in the Russian Far East? All this is covered in the books co-authored by Philip Mantle and myself. There are some other cases I consider to be important, despite the lack of more information and continuous secrecy: the Monchegorsk Object of 1987; the Dodin observation and sinister UFO of 1953; and the SETKA (top secret Soviet academic-military UFO research program) cases.

RG: What is the Russian government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?

PS: The current government does not discuss them. But of course they are engaged in their own research—more sophisticated, more enhanced, quiet, and comprehensive. And it is done in cooperation with the United States and the People’s Republic of China. As to official statements on the subject, Russia’s leaders like to make wry jokes about “aliens.” They are a very sarcastic bunch, full of humor.

The Russian Presidential building.

RG: Does the Russian Ministry of National Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?

PS: Of course they do—more than one, and under inconspicuous names, too. They also have very sophisticated space forces. I discuss their current developments and some old but persistent secrets in my videos.

RG: Has the Russian government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?

PS: About the same. The government just does not discuss UFOs. It’s different than under the Soviets when UFOs were often explained as bourgeois inventions. The current government is rebuilding Russia’s military might. As such, they encounter UFOs and USOs in their exploratory quests, and, of course, in the testing of advanced weaponry, missiles, and submarines; in the development of the Arctic; and in the oceanic expeditions. But the Russian military are silent too. Some news leak out. We check our sources daily. There are a lot of interesting developments—sightings, encounters in the Russian Federation, in Central Asia and China.

RG: Does Russia have a national UFO investigations organization, today, and how many smaller Russian UFO groups are you aware of?

PS: KOSMOPOISK was very active under Vadim Chernobrov. Alas, he passed away in 2017. They are still active all over Russia and beyond. Mikhail Gerstein is very active and knowledgeable. Konstantin Khazanov is a skeptical and insightful Russian researcher. Igor Kalityuk Artyom Bilik in Ukraine. Sergey Yefimov in Central Asia. Some old UFO researchers, from the Soviet times, like Vladimir Ajaja, are still alive.

RG: What are the most active regions of Russia for UFO sighting reports (hotspots)?

PS: Wherever the secret, new, powerful missiles are tested. They are often mistaken for UFOs. But, in my research, I would say the Russian Arctic, the Russian Far East, including the Kurils; Siberia; North-West Russia; and the magnificent, ever mysterious, Urals.

RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?

PS: I have been involved since my early youth, in Kiev (Kyiv) USSR. Since then, I have investigated a number of Russian/Soviet cases, and you can find them in our books. I have particular interest in USOs; “Russian” and Chinese “ancient aliens” or paleocontact; as well as international research, based on the hypotheses of Russian/Soviet scientists and thinkers. I visited Southern Africa in the 1980s and Mexico’s Yucatan several times. I explored ideas and hints found in books of Yefremov, Gorbovsky, others. But, also, as an American, and one who grew up in the tumultuous and fascinating Los Angeles, I have researched the mysterious tunnels and ancient civilizations in the area; local paranormal lore; and also some areas in the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Mount Shasta, 40 years ago, based on findings and publications of the Russian Australian writer and researcher, Andrew Tomas).

My conclusions are that we are dealing with an international phenomenon when it comes to USOs and UFOs, and that governments (major world and regional powers) know the issues and work together, albeit in almost complete secrecy, to deal with the phenomenon. As such, the areas of key international research and cooperation are: the Marianas Trench; Antarctica; the Arctic; and some other sites in our oceans. But China, Russia, and United States also have their own peculiar paranormal phenomena, strategic interests, and goals.

Depiction of a USO.

RG: How can Russian UFOlogy better itself?

PS: Russian UFOlogy would better itself through an influx of enthusiastic, energetic people. Much like those in the Soviet period, who had to overcome the ideological obstacles from the Soviet government and Communist ideologues—lack of funds and equipment, extreme secrecy and betrayals—and yet persisted in trying to find out what UFOs really are. But life is different now, and our perceptions and ability to record information is much different than 50 years ago. But the secrecy remains, albeit more sophisticated. And now there are tabloids, the Internet, and many other developments that would have been considered science-fiction. The debunkers, though, have remained, and are as unpleasant as before.

I believe there should be more international cooperation among ufologists. I have done as much as possible to generate such cooperation. OMNI Magazine had an article about my efforts in its October 1993 issue, and I continue to enhance such cooperation. I discussed Russian/Eurasian UFO and USO cases in Brazil and Hong Kong, and in a number of U.S. conferences. We all see the same mysterious unidentified flying and submersible objects. We (civilian researchers) need to start comparing data and information, and make necessary conclusions. And that is what I have been doing. It’s not easy; I have no sponsors, and have to fund my own work, but I persist.

For more information on the topics discussed in this interview, see Paul Stonehill’s many books, as well as his YouTube channel.

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/ufos-around-the-world-russia/feed/0Extinct Frog Reappears In Ecuadorhttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/extinct-frog-reappears-in-ecuador/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/extinct-frog-reappears-in-ecuador/#respondMon, 17 Dec 2018 10:33:51 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126343The horned marsupial frog that hasn’t been seen in over a decade has suddenly reappeared in Ecuador. The nocturnal amphibian – called Gastrotheca cornuta – that lived in the tropical rainforests was last seen in 2005. The frog has a very distinct look with horn-like skin flaps that rest above its eyes like eyebrows. They... Read more »]]>

The horned marsupial frog that hasn’t been seen in over a decade has suddenly reappeared in Ecuador. The nocturnal amphibian – called Gastrotheca cornuta – that lived in the tropical rainforests was last seen in 2005. The frog has a very distinct look with horn-like skin flaps that rest above its eyes like eyebrows. They also have a very unusual reproduction course as the eggs actually develop in a pouch on its body and when they hatch they are completely formed froglets, totally skipping the tadpole stage.

Gastrotheca cornuta

The frog was discovered by a team of biologists who were exploring a remote area of the Chocó region in the western part of Ecuador. When they heard the unrecognizable frog calls, they turned on their flashlights and noticed the shiny eyes of the horned frog. Team member Sebastian Di Domenico said, “We were so excited we started jumping up and down.” At that point, they took four frogs with them, including one female who was pregnant which would indicate that there is a stable amount of frogs in that area.

Ecuador is famous for the large amounts of amphibians that reside there with at least 589 species that they know of, and 45 percent of those aren’t found anywhere else on Earth. Unfortunately, they are very much put in danger by the deforestation in Ecuador. In fact, the country loses approximately two percent of their forests each year.

There are at least five more marsupial-frog species in the country that have not been seen in over three decades, so finding the Gastrotheca cornuta is definitely promising news. Luis Coloma, who directs Centro Jambatu, which is an amphibian research and conservation organization located in Quito, said, “Finding a rare or presumed-extinct frog like G. cornuta is surprising and encouraging.”

Ecuador’s federal reserve system protects at least 20 percent of the land from deforestation and development although logging still happens inside of those boundaries, so some organizations that work in the Chocó region are purchasing land and replanting logged areas. Foundation Jocotoco has bought 53,000 acres thus far which includes the home of the Gastrotheca cornuta.

Martin Schaefer, who is the director of the foundation said, “It’s an effective way to fill in the gaps and create a buffer against development.” Any person can donate to the cause and $200 will buy an acre of land which the foundation will match. Schaefer added, “If we want to save the Chocó and its wildlife, including this rare frog, the time is now.”

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/extinct-frog-reappears-in-ecuador/feed/0All Methane Has Mysteriously Disappeared From Marshttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/all-methane-has-mysteriously-disappeared-from-mars/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/all-methane-has-mysteriously-disappeared-from-mars/#respondSun, 16 Dec 2018 12:29:40 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126250Our relationship with methane is complicated. As natural gas, it’s an efficient fuel that that produces less carbon dioxide than other hydrocarbons. As cow farts, it’s a greenhouse gas often blamed for contributing to climate change. As an abundant substance trapped in permafrost, it gets explosively released when said climate change melts the permafrost in... Read more »]]>

Our relationship with methane is complicated. As natural gas, it’s an efficient fuel that that produces less carbon dioxide than other hydrocarbons. As cow farts, it’s a greenhouse gas often blamed for contributing to climate change. As an abundant substance trapped in permafrost, it gets explosively released when said climate change melts the permafrost in Siberia, creating massive holes. And, as a product of microbial methanogenesis, it’s an important sign that a planet may contain life, or at least have the ingredients to support it. The discovery of methane on Mars in 2004 got the scientific and let’s-move-to-Mars worlds excited. Unfortunately, the party may have been premature – new data shows that all of the Martian methane has disappeared. Who lit a match?

“The presence of methane has been confirmed thanks to the observations of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on board Mars Express during the past few weeks.”

That was the news in 2004 when the European Space Agency’s ESA Mars Express orbiter detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. The next question was, “Where does this methane come from?” One possibility is from above when organic carbon from solar system dust falls to the surface and reacts with solar radiation to form methane. Another is from below, produced by chemical reactions or live or decayed microorganisms. In 2014, NASA’s Curiosity rover detected a seasonal spike in methane – unexplained but still confirming the presence of the gas.

Sniff, sniff.

Then came the spoiler. In 2016, the ESA launched the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) which began scanning the Martian atmosphere this year arrived at Mars in 2016, this year began to scan the atmosphere for methane with Belgium’s Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) spectrometer and the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite spectrometer developed by Russia. Designed to detect very low levels of atmospheric methane (about 50 particles per trillion), scientists were confident they would finally get solid gas data.

“But we already know we can’t see any methane.”

There’s no methane showing up on Mars. Ann Carine Vandaele, NOMAD’s principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels, delivered the disappointing news this week at the semiannual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. Yes, they gave the TGO a software whack upside its head to make sure it was functioning normally and it was. How bad is this news? It could mean that there isn’t and never was any life on Mars, and there’s no methane that could possibly be used as a fuel by settlers from Earth.

No hot coffee on Mars? Why go?

The researchers aren’t giving up, especially since the Trace Gas Orbiter will be operational until at least 2022. They’re hoping there might be a mistake or they may find a sign this is just a temporary aberration and the methane is hiding somewhere. However, they probably already feel the same way Looney Tunes’ star Marvin the Martian often felt:

“This makes me very angry, very angry indeed.”

]]>https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/all-methane-has-mysteriously-disappeared-from-mars/feed/0Researchers Recreate Hot Primordial Soup That Existed Microseconds After The Big Banghttps://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/researchers-recreate-hot-primordial-soup-that-existed-microseconds-after-the-big-bang/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/12/researchers-recreate-hot-primordial-soup-that-existed-microseconds-after-the-big-bang/#respondSun, 16 Dec 2018 12:15:51 +0000https://mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=126040One of the more compelling reasons to accept the modern theory of the big bang and what came after it is because of how ridiculous it sounds and, as we all can empirically observe, the universe is ridiculous. Diving into the fundamental processes and epic, majestic, and impossibly old and huge events that started the... Read more »]]>

One of the more compelling reasons to accept the modern theory of the big bang and what came after it is because of how ridiculous it sounds and, as we all can empirically observe, the universe is ridiculous. Diving into the fundamental processes and epic, majestic, and impossibly old and huge events that started the chain reaction we find ourselves currently embroiled in, we start having to describe our reality with words like “gluon,” “quark,” and “hot soup.” Those are silly words for a silly universe. Yet, with the help of 21st century super-technology, researchers are beginning to see that these aren’t abstractions that only live inside equations, they’re tangible things (with the right measuring devices), and researchers with the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory seem to have cooked up a pot of the hot soup that emerged from the big bang and condensed into all the atoms we know and love.

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

It was a small pot. Subatomic in size, actually, but only slightly less impressive than a fine lobster bisque. The soup in question is called quark-gluon plasma, a “perfect fluid”—meaning that it flows with with essentially zero viscosity, or as opposite from molasses as you can get—that condensates into the protons and neutrons which make up the nuclei of atoms. To do this, researchers smashed different small particles into nuclei of gold atoms at close to the speed of light and a detector recorded what was expelled from the tiny, violent explosions. According to their predictions, a quark-gluon plasma perfect fluid (see? it’s ridiculous) would flow in the exact geometry of the exploded particle, which is precisely what happened. According to PHENIX spokesperson Yasuyuki Akiba:

“If such low viscosity conditions and pressure gradients are created in collisions between small projectiles and gold nuclei, the pattern of particles picked up by the detector should retain some ‘memory’ of each projectile’s initial shape—spherical in the case of protons, elliptical for deuterons, and triangular for helium-3 nuclei.”

This shows the different geometric flows produced by the quark-gluon plasma upon impact. Credit: Javier Orjuela Koop, University of Colorado, Boulder

Julia Velkovska, deputy spokesperson at PHENIX elaborated on the results:

“The latest data—the triangular flow measurements for proton-gold and deuteron-gold collisions newly presented in this paper—complete the picture. This is a unique combination of observables that allows for decisive model discrimination.”

“In all six cases, the measurements match the predictions based on the initial geometric shape. We are seeing very strong correlations between initial geometry and final flow patterns, and the best way to explain that is that quark-gluon plasma was created in these small collision systems. This is very compelling evidence.”

So what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, it’s another in an increasingly frequent series of steps to the big, previously unassailable questions about the nature of our reality and how it all got here. Also, a step closer to science literally playing God in a way never thought possible when that phrase was coined. Whether you think that’s pretty cool, or pretty scary is another matter entirely. But hey, there have been billions of humans who have lived and died in a time when nobody could even dream of blowing up subatomic particles at the speed of light with huge weird machines, and you’re not one of them. That’s pretty cool.